


all of the moves

by lucdarling



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Chicago (City), Emotional Baggage, F/M, Reunion Sex, Step-Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:06:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/pseuds/lucdarling
Summary: She sees a flash of blond curls and her heart gives a lurch. It could be him, but it’s not. It’s been years and Max lives in Chicago now.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 16
Kudos: 30





	all of the moves

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy's song "Of All The Gin Joints In All The World." My effusive thanks to Bee for suggestions when I couldn't think of words. All legal things are made up for the sake of fiction. Talk to me about Chicago in the comments!

Max can feel the eyes on her from the other end of the train car but doesn’t bother trying to search out the head they belong in amongst the private school kids on a field trip and other shift workers. She sees a flash of blond curls before a kid turns their head to continue a conversation with the person next to them and her heart gives a lurch. It could be him, but it’s not. It’s been years and Max lives in Chicago now. Plenty of people have blond curls that look like his.

She swipes her pass at the turnstile exit, scowling at the cheerful train drawing on her fare card. She misses her U-pass already, hates that it maxed out last month with the end of the semester. Maybe one day the CTA will allow a pass for the whole year, not one tied to the school calendar.

She stumbles home, hand shading her eyes from the afternoon sun. Max is exhausted, having worked a full opening shift and then almost the entire first hour of the afternoon shift before her coworker had bothered to show up. Her feet ache in the required no-slip clogs that she hates wearing.

There might still be eyes on her, but all Max can think about is slapping together a sandwich from leftovers in the communal fridge and falling into her bed. It’ll fuck up her sleep schedule but she needs some shut eye. She tried to sleep last night before her alarm went off, but Krista and her boyfriend were having sex in the next room and it had been difficult when their laughter woke her up from the doze she managed.

Max doesn’t begrudge them. She doesn’t. It’s just that she only got three good times before everything went pear-shaped. Before the cops and Neil’s open handed slap for saying his name after the judge’s gavel - Max figured out quickly that school was her way out, away from his dad. She couldn’t stay in Hawkins.

Max somehow lucked into almost a full scholarship to Loyola, even though Max isn’t Catholic or even particularly religious. She applied to every school in the city, figuring it was big enough she could become anonymous even as the rest of the Party scattered across the country. California was too far away, it turned out, but Neil and her mom could take a day off to move her into a dorm a few hours away. There’s loans for the rest and she’ll figure out how to pay them later. Max is spending the summer working in a bakery downtown and living one step above a flop house with other students she vaguely recognizes from her general classes just off campus. She had signed the lease two days before the dorms had closed for the semester and carried her belongings in three trips across campus.

It’s just a summer, and it’s better than going home.

Max pulls herself out of memories and heads into the communal kitchen for a snack. The house is large and quiet, old floorboards creaking under her feet. Working the opening shift puts her on a different schedule than everyone in the house except maybe the computer science major who rarely leaves his room, but is always willing to run up North Clark with Max for late night tacos.

She gets five bites into a sandwich when there’s a pounding at the front door. Max hopes it’s not the landlord, who knocks off their rent in exchange for having the girls watch him mow the lawn shirtless. She’s heard he’s a professor at DePaul but isn’t totally sure that statement wasn’t just one of her ditzier housemates getting confused with her latest sugar daddy.

“I’m coming to get the door, god. The kitchen’s in the back of the house, cool your jets.” Max gripes as the pounding on the door continues. She gets a hand on the knob and cracks it open. It better not be the census again, the household had recently voted to become an anarchist stronghold and had fun making the workers’ lives hell. Max thought it was a bit rude, but she was only a small part of the vote.

Blue eyes that still haunt her dreams stare into her as Billy Hargrove leans on the doorframe with one arm.

“Hey Maxine,” he purrs. “Did you miss me?”

“What are you doing here?” comes out of her mouth before she thinks about it. She blinks, and Billy is still standing on the concrete steps. “Couldn’t you get in some sort of trouble?”

“Only if I’m near a school,” Billy rolls his eyes. “You’re legal now, can even drink if you’ve got the right ID. I got lucky and saw you get on at Grand, followed you home. Gonna invite me in?”

“Fucking hell.” Max swears and wipes her suddenly sweaty hands on her trousers. “Yeah, come inside. Everyone’s gone to work. Do you uh, want something to eat? It’s my dinner time. Sort of.”

“Yeah, why’s that? It’s only four, way too early for dinner.” Billy asks even as his eyes roam around the living room. She tries to see it through his eyes: the overstuffed and sagging couches, one of which was her bed for three weeks when she moved in. The patchy rug and water stained coffee table, both dumpster rescues from around the corner that one of Max’s housemates was responsible for. The pile of unsorted mail sitting on top of Max’s skateboard that she left on the main floor a few nights ago.

“I work the opening shift, gotta be on the train early. I go to bed at like, seven or eight.” Max explains as she looks at him standing in the same room not six feet away from her. Billy looks good, with shorter hair than the mullet she remembers and bigger biceps shown off in the short sleeve tank. He’d probably fit in with any number of frat boys down at DePaul or UIC if he kept his mouth shut.

“Plenty of time for some fun, then.” Billy turns to her, sleazy smile on his face. He’s older, lines carved into his face that he didn’t have when he was torn away. Max is older too, and maybe that’s the point.

“My bedroom’s downstairs.” Max feels a fluttering in her belly, isn’t sure if it’s nerves or arousal. She shifts the mail onto the floor and tucks her skateboard under one arm. Better to have it in her room where the door locks rather than in a communal room.

She doesn’t take his hand before turning away, leading them to the last door on the left that hides the stairs. His footsteps fall lightly behind her despite the boots he wears.

Billy doesn’t say anything when they walk through Hailee’s room with the hammock instead of a bed. His eyebrow raises at the bright purple tapestry behind it and he smirks at the bong sitting pride of place on the dresser.

“Fun roommate.” He quips and misses the step down into the living room that makes up most of the basement.

Max laughs. She sets her plate with the half-eaten sandwich in the fridge that she, Hailee, and Krista share. She inspects two coffee mugs from the rack on the counter next to the Mr. Coffee machine. They look clean enough so she fills them from the tap.

“You been out long?”

“A month and a half,” Billy says with a sigh. He takes a seat on the couch in the alcove before her bedroom, patting the seat next to him in invitation. “Got a place on the South Side, found a job last week as a bartender after I passed the course.”

“You don’t want mine,” Max says with a chuckle, imagining Billy behind the pastry display case and greeting people, packaging up fruit tarts. “Fancy ass grocery store near Navy Pier. It turns out some people pay five an ounce for olive oil in their hedge fund manager suits. Whatever a hedge fund is.”

“The fuck?” Billy swallows his sip of water with lips pursed so it doesn’t spit all over the table.

Max shrugs as best she can before she sits next to him, too close. The heat of his body is a brand even through her trousers. “Rich people are weird. I got screamed at last week when the espresso machine was broken, even though we have another in the cafe at the other end of the store. The bakers are all nice though, the actual bakers. Phyllis is wonderful too, she works up front with me.”

“Rich people,” Billy mutters darkly. “No pleasing them.”

“Tell me about it.” Max rolls her eyes. She doesn’t want to spend time talking about her customer service smile or her grungy housemates. All she wants is Billy, here and now.

She swings her leg over his thighs and straddles him. Like she knew he would, his hands come up to hold her hips. Max shivers, recalling when she was younger and how large his hands felt on her. They’re still big and Billy doesn’t waste any time slipping his hands under her shirt to clutch at soft skin. She smiles and strips out of her shirt, dropping it onto the cushion next to him.

“Yeah?” Billy asks. His eyes are dark blue and focused on hers with an intensity she thought was just her mind misremembering. “It’s been a while.”

“Me too,” Max says. “There’s condoms and lube in the table to your left. This is a very sex positive household.”

Billy lifts her up a little, off of him as she gets to her feet and unbuttons her trousers. Billy follows suit and gets to his feet but doesn’t bother undressing, just shucks his jeans down far enough to get his dick out. He rolls the condom as she stands in the alcove, nude. It’s a little warm because they don’t run the a/c in the daytime but Max knows she’ll be sweating soon enough.

“C’mere,” Billy says. He looks down at the floor to carefully shuffle backwards a few steps so there’s space between him and the arm of the couch. Max hopes he trips again and is disappointed. “Bend over.”

“So classy,” she snarks but does as he wants. It might not be his first fuck after prison but Max knows he’ll always want her. She’s his weakness.

Billy groans low in his throat when Max reaches behind her to hold herself open, puts herself on display for his eyes. She doesn’t have to wait long before there’s warm slippery fingers rubbing between her folds. Billy slides in two of them right at the start.

His fingers are thick and Max hisses at the stretch. The couch’s arm digs into her hip bones, not exactly comfortable. She scoots back, onto his fingers. It’s a little better, maybe, weight on her stomach now.

“This what you thought about all those nights?” Max asks. She isn’t sure she wants the answer, doesn’t know what she’d say if he asked her the same question. It’s been almost four years since that night, Billy’s face lit by red and blue lights as he was led away to the sound of his father yelling.

“Oh, I thought about a lot of things.” 

He rubs his cock on her heated skin, sinking in after a few passes. Max bites her bottom lip at the stretch. It burns and it feels good. She doesn’t want to let him know how much he still affects her.

“Yeah,” Billy groans. His hairy thighs touch the back of hers when he’s all the way in. “Missed this.”

Max lifts her hips but there isn’t much leverage when she’s ass up over the couch arm and his fingers are leaving bruises on her hips. All she can really do is brace herself and take it, each hard thrust that Billy gives her. She stares at the plaid fabric under her arms, wishes she could touch her clit without smashing her hand between couch and pubic bone.

Billy doesn’t care or doesn’t notice, too lost in chasing his own pleasure.

Max doesn’t fool herself that he’s been celibate the month and a half he’s been out, despite his earlier words. She knows him. She also knows that Billy won’t give her up for anything. He went to jail over her, even as she protested to deaf ears.

She was seventeen, not an actual child. What is age but a number when you live in a war zone and not a home? Max had consented, enthusiastically. It was those same cries that meant everything came crashing down one night without warning.

Billy pushes into her, drawing her focus back to her step-brother at her back.

“Good for you?” Billy slows to shallow movements, remembering she’s also a participant in the act.

“Touch me and it will be.” Max demands. She turns her head to catch a glimpse of bright blue eyes.

Billy pulls out, which isn’t what she wanted. Max whines just a little at the loss.

“Kneel on the couch,” he tells her with a light spank to her ass. Max awkwardly stretches forward and then slides her legs over the arm. It’s not graceful but she feels his eyes on her nonetheless. She crawls to the other end of the couch, resting her arms and head on the opposite arm she’d lain over. Billy settles on the couch, legs on the outside of hers. Max’s fingernails scrabble for purchase as he thrusts back in without warning, rocking her forward.

“Yeah, this is better.” Billy mutters, already starting up a fast rhythm that leaves Max hanging on tight. He’s getting deeper than before, almost to the point of pain. Max doesn’t care in the moment.

She braces herself on her left arm, uses her right to reach underneath and touch her clit. Her fingers slide over it, around, a little pressure just so and she’s coming with a gasp. Penetration has never been enough for Max, much to Billy’s chagrin.

He buries himself in her, little circles as he grinds and his cock throbs, filling the condom. He leans over her and presses a wet kiss to her shoulder, to the back of her neck. He’s sweaty and shirtless. She doesn’t know when he took his tank top off. Max lets him have this moment, doesn’t move as he bows over her like a too warm blanket as he softens.

Billy pulls out with a pained sound and Max turns her head. He’s looking down, hand still holding the condom on. She thinks she might see something wet at the corner of his blue eyes and turns her attention to clambering off the couch and not directly onto the floor with shaky legs.

Billy’s already in the kitchenette by the time Max turns around, condom disposed of. He’s got a handful of damp paper towels to wipe himself off. He holds them out to her with a thin smile, uncaring of the water that drips off his hand.

“I’ll go shower, saves me some time in the morning.” Max waves his offer away. She walks across the room, naked. She feels his eyes on her the entire way until she slips into her bedroom.

Billy is hopping into his jeans to pull them up when she walks back to the living room with her towel over one arm. It’s just like he used to when they were both younger and less haunted. Max thinks about saying something as he reaches for his tank top and nothing comes to mind.

She closes the door to the bathroom behind her and doesn’t lock the door. Billy doesn’t bother her as she washes.

Max walks into her bedroom, dimly lit even in that time between afternoon and evening because the lone window opposite her bed is small and at ground level. Billy lays on her bed, maybe not asleep but certainly on his way there. Max braids her damp hair back, finds a hair tie from the mess of objects and papers on the desk.

She curls against his side in the little twin sized bed she’s calling home for the next few months until the dorms open for her final year. Max doesn’t expect Billy to stay the night, doesn’t bother asking. He knows where she lives, where she works. There will be no getting rid of him now.


End file.
